UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
In two weeks in February 2015 Pope Francis has uncovered finally, in secret meetings with Cardinals, his real plans and timetable, after two years of spinning the media and worldwide Catholics. Despite his disarming public smile and massive media efforts, the pope’s plans are basically a continuation of his two failed predecessors’ oppressive policies and teachings, only now under tighter papal control.
Holding bishops accountable for child abuse has this week been buried in a farcical “do nothing commission”, that is now even promoted by well intentioned but misguided abuse survivors. Money matters are being dealt with by disgraced Cardinal Pell, who proved by his brutal treatment of priest abuse survivors in Australia that he can be expected always to put the financial fortunes of the Catholic Church’s clerical leadership ahead of Jesus’ Gospel mandates.
Pope Francis is evidently stretching out making “formal infallible papal decisions”, including on divorced and gay Catholics, on women’s perpetual inequality, on confirming the contraception ban, et al., to help (1) US bishops and their low tax billionaire donors (with help from Cardinal Burke’s contrived and planned anti-gay marriage pitch to fundamentalist US voters) elect Jeb Bush as US president next year, and (2) then to help German bishops thereafter to save their $7 billion annual tax subsidy. This continuity of the essential elements of the last two pope’s disastrous policies is captured in “a thousand words” in a revealing photo, at the secret Cardinals’ meeting, of Pope Francis and Cardinal Sodano running the show as a team, see here,
The overall implications and fatal flaw of Francis’ plans are discussed in my remarks, “The Crisis Pope Francis Faces” here,
Cardinal Sodano has been the most powerful Cardinal since the 1870 Vatican Council I first made popes “infallible”. Sodano’s longtime protege, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, is being groomed by “interim Pope Francis” to be the next pope, likely to occur soon after next year’s critical US elections since Francis’ friendly facade is needed to help get more US Latino voters to vote Republican.
Sodano was “de facto pope” during much of John Paul II’s reign. He treated the priest sex abuse scandal as an annoying distraction. Sodano’s Easter 2010 world televised address to Pope Benedict referred dismissively to the abuse scandal. Sodano arrogantly told the bewildered Benedict and the world that “… The People of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers” . (emphasis mine). Has Cardinal Sodano really ever asked the People of God — his biggest mistake, no?
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